Monday, 2 May 2011

Lentil and dagger flower v. 2.0

I've made two new versions of the flower in my previous post. They're really fun to make, even if it can be a little hard to maintain the tension sometimes, but I'm facing a lentil bead shortage now... I rarely use lentil beads so I more or less never buy them -- and not any large quantities when I do. I wanted to make another flower using the same lemon and fuchsia beads in the other post, but one of the beads disappeared, leaving me with just four beads left. That's one short. I also don't have many colours of 11 mm daggers. Isn't it typical, getting ideas that mean you have to buy more beads in order to realise them? No matter how many beads you have, of cause you're missing the one you really need!

Anyway, the new flowers. Late last night, when I'd gone to bed already, I started thinking about alternatives to using dagger beads. Aha -- don't I have some tip-drilled leaf beads that would be approximatly the right width to fit between the lentils? Testing them today, my thought was confirmed.

Due to the lentil shortage I had to choose between dark bronze or green lentils so I ended up with an all-green flower this time. Note how I didn't bother to check what direction the leaves were facing: they are slightly asymmetrical so had I flipped them all on the same side, the design would've looked slightly different.

I also have a zip bag of tiny 8 mm daggers that I wanted to try out. They're just 3 mm shorter than the daggers in the original flower, but it's enough to alter the design as they just barely stick out behind the lentils. Here, I did something you should try to avoid when experimenting: changing two parameters at the same time. First, I used 15/0 seeds instead of 11/0 (also adding an extra bead at each lentil hole). Second, I added smaller daggers with a smaller width. Still turned out ok, though.

As with the green leaf flower, I didn't add a drop or other bead in the centre. Think they look nice without one too so if I don't have the perfect bead, I'm not adding one. Although, they might look a bit more finished with a centre, or what do you say?

By the way, want a pic of the back of the flower?

Note on scale: All lentil beads are 6 mm wide. The size of the daggers (or leaf beads) determine the final size of the flower, which the tiniest being barely 2 cm wide.

3 comments:

They are such a sweet design.I think they may look a little more finished with a central bead, however the way the seed beads join in the centre give a good illusion of a centre, if you understand what I mean! I admire anyone who works with these tiny elements!jenni